The Vertigo Years by Philipp Blom

Author:Philipp Blom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2010-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

Carried by conviction: Emmeline Pankhurst during

a demonstration.

Leonora Cohen was one of these extreme rebels for the cause of women’s suffrage. Born in Leeds in 1873 as the daughter of an artist and stonemason with progressive ideas, she had married jeweller Henry Cohen, in itself an act of rebellion, as her prospective husband’s parents, Jewish immigrants from Russia and Prussia, were appalled at the idea of their son’s marrying out of the faith and so cut him off. Leonora was certainly no working girl. Her husband’s business went well, their son Reginald was sent to boarding school and Mr Cohen was one of the pillars of the Leeds and County Liberal Club. Having been happily immersed in running the house and looking after her son (a daughter had died of tubercular meningitis), Mrs Cohen began to develop her political interests. Aged thirty-eight, a mother and the wife of a respected local businessman, Leonora’s situation was difficult, as her first forays into activism soon showed. Of all her friends and acquaintances, only her husband Henry supported her regardless: ‘He stuck all that for my sake,’ she would later write, ‘I lost every friend I had ... My name was mud.’

By now, the suffragettes’ attempts to storm Parliament had become a public spectacle, with crowds of onlookers and reporters waiting for the women to appear, as a reporter for the Yorkshire Post related somewhat breathlessly:

All the roads adjacent to the Houses of Parliament were blocked by sturdy men in blue, who stood in steady lines waiting for the feminine onslaught ... Plain clothes men hung about furtively under lampposts; ambulance men paraded with self-importance…We found little to suggest that the Palace of Westminster was about to be disturbed …

But a sudden change came over the scene. The flash-light of the photographer announced the approach of the enemy from Caxton Hall [the Suffragist assembly point] ... The Scotland Yard officers had the pale set faces of men who knew they would have to go through with it. From the Clock Tower the hour of eight was boomed out by Big Ben …

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